Most of those examples you would name would be non-wizard vs wizard stories or wizard/witch/other-spellcaster grants a boon and not "wizard and non-wizard team-up to go questing."
Most of them would include divine intervention or fantastical beings. I'm not sure where the first tale of the old man sorcerer came from. Maybe Arthurian legend is where I first came upon it. Most of the past myth involved gods interacting with mortals and they were almost the sole wielders of what we would see as magic.
And that is why I said major knights. Figures such as Gawain, Lancelot(ugh talk about a french Marty Stu), Percival, Galahad, Mordred, Tristan, Dinadan and even Arthur himself. These guys went around slaying dragons, beating up giants, thwarting the schemes of various sorcerers and enchantresses and defeating groups of a dozen or more rival knights. Each of these guys was just as feared/respected by the common knight as Merlin was.
The Knights of the Round Table were the medieval equivalent of the Justice League. Round Table pages and squire were often better knights than the knights other kings could field.
The knights were strong. But I doubt any one of them could go toe to toe with Merlin. Many of them fell sway to lesser wizards than Merlin. But Arthurian legend didn't involve much flashy D&D magic where the simple motivation is to destroy. Most older fantasy used wizard-types as enchanters of men's minds. Different type of fantasy that you could simulate using the D&D system, but it definitely isn't the D&D version of the wizard.
That depends on how you define wizard. If you include wandering sages and priests who go around defeating supernatural threats then you have your adventuring wizards who sometimes hang out with various warriors.
It completely depends on the writer. But in my experience the adventuring wizard hanging out with the fighter is something mostly seen in D&D. Most of what I've read written before D&D's time involved wizard-type figures that were ancient and powerful. Usually the young fighter was seeking them out to help them save the kingdom or for some other reason or the young fighter was an object of desire or a pawn in one of their games.
I don't know if you are aware of how this whole discussion came about. But it came down to complaints that 3E gave the wizard too much power, thus rendering the fighter or other classes as useless and weak. And thus a game system that didn't make it so fighters stood a chance against wizards one versus one was what made fighters useless.
Many of us, myself included, don't see it that way. Fighters don't have to be able to take a wizard in a one on one fight to be useful. Just like you don't see Gandalf fighting Aragorn or Rand'al'thor blasting down his non-magical buddies or Merlin blasting down Arthur or Superman kicking the living crap out of Aquaman to put it into superhero perspective.
And ultimately it is up to the DM to create challenges that incorporate the abilities of every class into the game. Not sit there and let the wizard scry, teleport in, cast a no save spell, and end the encounter which apparently is what a great many of the people complaining about the 3E magic system were experiencing. Yet it wasn't something experienced by DMs like myself that have been playing for years and know better than to let players game the system.
I don't think because certain players are abusing a system that it should be re-designed in a manner that removes all chance of abuse and puts said fighter and wizard on equal ground for no other reason than game balance even if it completely removes all the flavor from the magic system and waters it down into a very uninteresting, uninspired system that adheres too strictly to balance versus flavor. Especially given that decades of flavor were built into the magic system that made it a unique aspect of the game system.
It would have been better to incorporate ideas about how DMs can deal with some of the situations that come up using story telling devices rather than slavishly adhering to the rules. Because a DM is ultimately the lead storyteller first and foremost. His or her job is to drive the story. The rules are a framework for adjudicating combat and other situations, but are still there to serve the story first and not the other way around. As a 3E and now
Pathfinder DM I don't have trouble challenging my players, even with the so called omnipotent wizard present.
I prefer my D&D be representative of fiction. Which often makes the heroes extraordinary, even the fighter types. Though the fighters might lose to a prepared wizard in a one versus one battle, they are no less impressive than the wizard when they step onto the field of battle and go toe to toe with a giant or cut down a horde of trolls by themselves. It is up to the DM to create scenarios where the fighter shines bright. That is more important than the game designer trying to balance the fighter versus the wizard whether it be in fiction or in a game.
